A charming tribute to a remarkable woman and the bond between mother and son.
As he sat at his dying mother's bedside in 2013, Simon (Baby We Were Meant for Each Other: In Praise of Adoption, 2010, etc.), the award-winning host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, tweeted messages to his 1.2 million followers, recording the last moments of his mother's exuberant life.
The author had flown to Chicago after learning his mother was in the intensive care unit. She had been about to travel to California for a summer-holiday visit with his family. Troubled by an annoying cough and weight loss, she decided to get a checkup before leaving. To her dismay, she learned that lung cancer that had been in remission had returned, and she had only days left to live. Simon found her hooked up to oxygen, gasping for breath and speaking with difficulty. Nonetheless, she retained her joie de vivre and savored memories of times they had shared and people they knew. This book is built around the tweets that he sent during that difficult time. They became the vehicle for him to memorialize her indomitable spirit as she gave “a last great performance.” Her great love was the author’s father, whom she divorced after his out-of-control alcoholism became destructive, and she had two subsequent marriages. Although it was Simon’s father who had been a professional comedian, it was his mother's extraordinary sense of humor, gift of friendship and love of life that dominated his life. Even in the period when she was a single mother taking modeling jobs to support her son, they lived in style. “Dress for the job you want, not the one you have,” was one of her mottoes. Another was “Never be afraid to go into a classy place.”
A charming tribute to a remarkable woman and the bond between mother and son.Pub Date: March 31, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-06113-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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